Objective: The main objective was to assess infant feeding practices in Tanzania as part of the process towards the development of the National Infant and Young Child Nutrition Strategy for Tanzania.
Methods: Information was collected using Part One of the WHO/ Linkages Tool: Infant and young child feeding. A tool for assessing national practices, policies and programmes (WHO, 2003) and through review of published literature.
Results: Using Tanzania Reproductive and Child Health Survey (1999) data, Tanzania scored “good” on three of the five rated indicators on the WHO/ Linkages Tool. These are - percentage of babies breastfed within one hour of birth (60%), median duration of breastfeeding for children below 36 months of age (20.9%) and percentage of breastfed babies 7-<10 months who received complementary foods in the last 24 hours (90.7%). Tanzania did not score well on the other two indicators – percentage of babies 0-<6 months exclusively breastfed in the last 24 hours (31.8%) and percentage of babies 0-<12 months of age who received any food or drink from bottles in the last 24 hours.
There were limited published reports on infant and young child feeding practices in Tanzania. However, information from published Tanzanian Demographic and Health Survey reports compared well with findings of published articles reviewed. Although initiation of breastfeeding was established to be almost universal, undesirable practices of discarding colostrum, giving prelacteal feeds, short duration of exclusive breastfeeding as well as too early and delayed introduction of complementary foods were found to be common in some parts of Tanzania.
Conclusions: There is need for more research on breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices in Tanzania and especially among HIV positive and working mothers. Strong advocacy on the importance of optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices, and raising awareness of working mothers on their entitlement to paid breastfeeding breaks during working hours are recommended.